An almost contemporary of Sir Walter is Sir Thomas Lipton – both successful self-made men from humble beginnings. Like Walter, Thomas Lipton was a friend of Edward VII leading the Kaiser to mock the king for going boating with his grocer. He already went carriage driving with his wine merchant. That says much about social fluidity in Britain and the rigidity of the hierarchy in Germany.
In later life Walter was a prolific author, mostly on equine subjects but his output included books about the artist George Morland, cock fighting and two books which may have inspired PG Wodehouse: Poultry-keeping on Farms and Smallholdings (1904) and Pig in Health and How to Avoid Swine Fever (1907).
There is no evidence that they met or knew each other and it may be that many rich men of leisure in those days dabbled in pigs and poultry. Sir Walter definitely made jam and lavender water, a loss-making venture, but the Elsenham brand continues today as part of an international consortium. But on horses he was a sound authority. Incidentally, perhaps wisely, he eschewed race horses.
This is the only one of his books I have read and it is of some interest. He writes about the early days of horse-drawn public conveyances – hackney carriages.
“In 1662, there were about 2,490 hackney coaches in London, if we may accept the figures given by John Cressel in a pamphlet, which we shall consider on a future page. It was in this year that Charles II. passed a law appointing Commissioners with power to make certain improvements in the London streets. One of the duties entrusted to them was that of reducing the number of hackney coaches by granting licenses; and only 400 licenses were to be granted.
These Commissioners grossly abused the authority placed in their hands, wringing bribes from the unfortunate persons who applied for licenses, and carrying out their task with so little propriety that in 1663 they were indicted and compelled to restore moneys they had wrongfully obtained. In regard to this it is to be observed that one of the 400 hackney coach licenses sanctioned by the Act was a very valuable possession. We learn from a petition submitted by the hackney coachmen to Parliament that holders of these licenses, which cost £5 each, sold them for £100. The petition referred to is undated, but appears to have been sent in when William III’s Act to license 700 hackney coaches (passed in 1694) was before Parliament.
The bitterness of the watermen against Sedan chairs seems to have died out by Pepys’ time, but it was still hot against the hackney coaches, as a passage in the Diary sufficiently proves. Proceeding by boat to Whitehall on February 2, 1659, Samuel Pepys talked with his waterman and learned how certain cunning fellows who wished to be appointed State Watermen had cozened others of their craft to support an address to the authorities in their favour. According to Pepys’ informant, nine or ten thousand hands were set to this address (the men were obviously unable to read or write) “when it was only told them that it was a petition against hackney coaches.”
The Act of 1662 has already been referred to in connection with the number of hackney coaches in London; we may glance at it again, as it gives a few interesting particulars. No license was to be granted to any person following another trade or occupation, and nobody might take out more than two licenses. Preference was to be given to “ancient coachmen” (by which expression we shall doubtless be right in understanding, not aged men but men who had followed the calling in previous years), and to such men as had suffered for their service to Charles I or Charles II.
Horses used in hackney coaches were to be not less than fourteen hands high. The fares were duly prescribed by time and distance; for a day of twelve hours the coachman was to be paid not over 10s.; or 1s. 6d. for the first and 1s. for every subsequent hour. “No gentleman or other person” was to pay over 1s. for hire of a hackney coach “from any of the Inns of Court or thereabouts to any part of St. James’ or the city of Westminster (except beyond Tuttle Street)”; and going eastwards the shilling fare would carry the hirer from the Inns of Court to the Royal Exchange; eighteenpence was the fare to the Tower, to Bishopsgate Street or Aldgate. This Act forbade any hackney coach to ply for hire on Sunday; thus the hackney carriage was placed in the same category as the Thames wherries and barges. The restrictions concerning the persons to whom licenses might be granted obviously afforded the Commissioners opportunity for the malpractices we have already mentioned.”
(Early Carriages and Roads, Sir Walter Gilbey, 1903)